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If time travel is ever invented we would know it: they (time travelers) would be all over the place! And they would be so thick at the most "popular" moments in time (the sinking of the Titanic, the Sermon on the Mount [if it ever happened], etc) that they would out number the actual participants. Hard to miss them! Why, there would have been thousands of future doctoral students visiting 2016 just to research how on earth the USA ever elected Donal Trump.

The only way this would not be the case would be if time travel somehow was kept in absolute secrecy and restricted to just a tiny handful of authorized travelers- but remember this secrecy and regulation would have to be achieved and maintained from the moment time travel was invented on to the most distant future, in multiple countries and over multiple regimes and civilizations. Seem unlikely..

They follow the staff of St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, as they time-travel to “investigate major historical events in contemporary time”

Time has ways of stopping time travellers from interfering with the flow of events, well most of the time.

I love those books. Funny, thrilling and educational.

__________________"If you trust in yourself ... and believe in your dreams ... and follow your star ... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things" - Terry Pratchett

This is what I was thinking. If he is deluded enough to genuinely believe that he is a time traveller, then I'm guessing he would pass a polygraph test.
Doesn't mean he's right, though.

Maybe, but people who know how can fool a polygraph too. It isn't a science.
Conversely, there can be false positives. A person telling the truth may nonetheless have a physiological reaction that indicates that they are lying.

__________________A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare

They follow the staff of St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, as they time-travel to “investigate major historical events in contemporary time”

Time has ways of stopping time travellers from interfering with the flow of events, well most of the time.

I'll be honest, I found those books to be incredibly badly written. The characters only rarely act like real human beings, and many of the ideas in them seem only half formulated (such as whatever was supposed to be going on with Jack the Ripper, which the author admitted in an interview she just thought would be creepy).

Maybe, but people who know how can fool a polygraph too. It isn't a science.
Conversely, there can be false positives. A person telling the truth may nonetheless have a physiological reaction that indicates that they are lying.

Absolutely. Polygraphs are based on the assumption that every single person has predictable physiological responses to lying - and we know that they don't. We also don't know the state of mind of any particular polygraph examinee while they are undergoing any particular polygraph examination.

Add to that the fact that the results are subjective and have to be interpreted and the result is junk science.

The most we can say is that polygraphs results seem a bit more accurate than chance for people in the middle of the bell curve of physiological responses.

Polygraphs are infamous for their inaccuracy when applied to psychopaths or even practised liars. They are also inaccurate when applied to people experiencing high stress (such as being a suspect in a serious crime.) The closer the emotional connection between the examinee and the victim of a crime, the more stress they will experience. Furthermore, irrational guilt is often felt by people of conscience about victims of crime they are close to. Parents of missing kids often give false positives on polygraph tests. Add to that the fact that some innocent people have a passionate emotional response to being accused of crime can give false positives. The bias in polygraphy is against the innocent and in favour of the guilty.

This doesn't even address specific steps that can be taken to deliberately spoof the device. It also doesn't address the ways to spoof the operator. Aldrich Ames found that simply establishing a friendly working relationship with the examiner who would be subjectively interpreting his results was enough to get away with treason.

Looking from the outside it's really hard to understand the love affair the USA has with polygraphs. If they have never been able to establish sufficient accuracy to be admitted as evidence in court, why are they they so popular as an "investigative tool?"

In the case of "Noah" it's all a bit of a moot point. There is no evidence he was actually polygraphed at all.

I'll be honest, I found those books to be incredibly badly written. The characters only rarely act like real human beings, and many of the ideas in them seem only half formulated (such as whatever was supposed to be going on with Jack the Ripper, which the author admitted in an interview she just thought would be creepy).

"Suggesting spurious explanations isn't relevant to my work." -- WTC Dust.
"Both cannot be simultaneously true, and so one may conclude neither is true, and if neither is true, then Apollo is fraudulent." -- Patrick1000.

Location: stranded at Buenos Aires, a city that, like NYC or Paris, has so little to offer...

Posts: 8,263

Summary of the thread: sociopath tells a bunch of lies and passes polygraph test.

__________________Horrible dipsomaniacs and other addicts, be gone and get treated, or covfefe your soul!These fora are full of scientists and specialists. Most of them turn back to pumpkins the second they log out.I got tired of the actual schizophrenics that are taking hold part of the forum and decided to do something about it.

__________________Horrible dipsomaniacs and other addicts, be gone and get treated, or covfefe your soul!These fora are full of scientists and specialists. Most of them turn back to pumpkins the second they log out.I got tired of the actual schizophrenics that are taking hold part of the forum and decided to do something about it.

"Suggesting spurious explanations isn't relevant to my work." -- WTC Dust.
"Both cannot be simultaneously true, and so one may conclude neither is true, and if neither is true, then Apollo is fraudulent." -- Patrick1000.

"Suggesting spurious explanations isn't relevant to my work." -- WTC Dust.
"Both cannot be simultaneously true, and so one may conclude neither is true, and if neither is true, then Apollo is fraudulent." -- Patrick1000.

There are a huge number of television episodes and movies that use time travel as a plot device. At times my wife will turn to me and say, "But that can't happen! We were told three episodes ago that the protagonist cannot cross his own time path without creating a universe-destroying paradox, but in the latest episode he is working as a team with his younger self to battle the evil dictator of Tramdor. Why is that okay now?" I can only look at her and say, "It's a time travel plot. Not only need it not make logical sense, it cannot make logical sense. Just pretend you never noticed a problem and enjoy it for what it is worth."

If time travel is ever invented we would know it: they (time travelers) would be all over the place! And they would be so thick at the most "popular" moments in time (the sinking of the Titanic, the Sermon on the Mount [if it ever happened], etc) that they would out number the actual participants.

A number of time travelers visiting the Sermon on the Mount wouldn't really be problematic; the number of attendees is given as an unspecified "multitudes".

As for the Titanic...that situation is a little trickier. Titanic sank alone at night in the Atlantic; the only obvious way to spectate the event would have been to time-travel to a point before the ship's departure and buy a ticket for the voyage, which would be problematic for two reasons: first, each time-traveler buying a ticket would deprive a historical victim of his or her place on the ship, changing history; and second, it would place the time-traveler in deadly peril since there would be no safe way to disembark during the sinking.

But there is a potential solution, hidden in the record of facts surrounding the sinking. Watch officers on the Californian are known to have observed a ship for quite some time around 12 miles estimated distance, which at some point stopped, extinguished its lights, fired some rockets, and then appeared to steam away. This is commonly considered to be an observation of the Titanic's striking an iceberg and sinking. The one hitch is that Titanic's watch officers never saw any other the lights on the horizon until some time after striking the iceberg, when they first began lowering the lifeboats. And the light they observed was much closer, only about 5 miles, and thought by some to be approaching - in fact, it appeared so close that the first lowered lifeboats were directed to make for it, Captain Smith being under the impression the boats could've transferred passengers to this other ship and come back to pick up more. Ultimately only one lifeboat really made an effort to row toward this light, but it was seemingly unable to get any closer; and before long the light had disappeared. Again, this light is commonly considered to have been the Californian, much closer than the Californian itself estimated its position to the Titanic was. But if that were true, the Titanic's watch officers should have been able to see those lights much earlier - before hitting the iceberg, even - and they should've been able to see them continuously until daybreak, since the Californian was stationary for that entire time.

Hypothetically: the Californian estimated its own position correctly; neither they nor the Titanic were directly visible to one another, and this light was a third unknown ship, roughly between and thus visible to both. This ship left the scene quickly after Titanic sank (correctly observed and reported by the Californian's watch officer, rather than being a mistaken observation of the sinking of the former) and never identified itself in the aftermath, likely to avoid the same scrutiny the master and crew of the Californian faced in the aftermath of the disaster. Or possibly because it was a private vessel secretly chartered by time-travelers to spectate the sinking of the Titanic and then flee before it could be noticed by any responding ships.

There is a short fantasy story in which a greedy miser in the 1800s catches the devil in a trap with the idea of making a deal. The trapped devil fusses and fumes but the miser refuses to release him, "No, not for all the tea in China!" But the devil then holds up a finger and asks, "Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you release me for all the tea in China?" The deal is made and the devil delivers:

Immediately and on top of the miser's head.

I think the miser would have said no a second time. Who wants all that tea, ya?

As for the Titanic...that situation is a little trickier. Titanic sank alone at night in the Atlantic; the only obvious way to spectate the event would have been to time-travel to a point before the ship's departure and buy a ticket for the voyage, which would be problematic for two reasons: first, each time-traveler buying a ticket would deprive a historical victim of his or her place on the ship, changing history; and second, it would place the time-traveler in deadly peril since there would be no safe way to disembark during the sinking.

This makes several assumptions about time travel. All these problems could be solved by landing a TARDIS in a cargo hold.

If I was going back to the sinking of the Titanic, I’d darn well bring a big ship with plenty of lifeboats and blankets. Ship still sinks, passengers and crew get lucky break and survive.

To paraphrase Professor Farnswoth, “Oh, so now Mr. I’m-my-own-grandfather is worried about changing history? Screw history! Let’s get them the hell out of there!”

Unfortunately (or fortunately), any such attempt must fail.

Going back to our hypothetical situation of a third ship between the Californian and the Titanic, visible to both: it is possible that the rockets the Californian observed came from the Titanic - the ship itself being under the horizon, but the rockets themselves high enough to be visible (which is the point, after all), and the Californian misinterpreted the rockets as coming from this third, in-between ship because of visual juxtaposition. But, it would also be possible that a "rogue" element among the time-traveling observers on the third ship was of a like mind as you, and fired off some rockets of their own in order to get the Californian's attention and convince them to investigate, and perhaps rescue some more of the Titanic's passengers...however, again, any such attempt must necessarily fail (and did).

As for the Titanic...that situation is a little trickier. Titanic sank alone at night in the Atlantic; the only obvious way to spectate the event would have been to time-travel to a point before the ship's departure and buy a ticket for the voyage, which would be problematic for two reasons: first, each time-traveler buying a ticket would deprive a historical victim of his or her place on the ship, changing history; and second, it would place the time-traveler in deadly peril since there would be no safe way to disembark during the sinking.

Perhaps a time traveller was sent to observe the successful maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic on which the man who invented the time machine sailed to New York for the first public demonstration of the device. Unfortunately the beautiful time traveller catches the eye of captain Smith, distracting him with disastrous results. Which is why we no longer have time travel today!